The Prom on August 26 was presented by The BBC Scottish Symphony conducted by Ilan Volkov. It included, along with Ah! Perfido (sung by Lucy Crowe) and the second Symphony of Beethoven, the first performance of Minds in Flux by George Lewis. This involved computer software design and realization by Damon Holzborn and Sound Intermedia. Like the piece by Shiva Feshareki a week earlier, Minds in Flux was written a designed to make use of the special acoustical properties of the Albert Hall, and it did that handsomely. The sounds of the work were compelling and alluring and engaging and

The Proms concert on August 19, presented by the BBC Singers conducted by Sofi Jeannin, was a continuous complex sequence lasting about an hour and a half. In it, a number of renaissance choral works were paired with reflections on or reactions to those pieces by more recent composers, in three cases BBC commissions written for this concert. At the center of this was one of Stravinsky’s completion, by adding lost parts, of one of the Three Sacred Songs by Gesualdo, Illunina nos. There was also a work by Hildegard of Bingen, O viridissima virga which stood by itself. An

The Proms concert on August 17 was presented by The Manchester Collective. The group apparently has different manifestations, but in this case it was an almost twenty-member string orchestra, led by its music director, violinist Rakhi Singh, performing a more usual sort of new music concert, featuring harpsichord soloist Mahan Esfahani. Adam Szabo, the organization’s Chief Executive, also participated as a sort of MC for the evening, introducing and commenting on the program. Like the concert highlighting Abel Selaocoe two days earlier, it had a piece featuring, or at least referencing Jean-Phillipe Rameau, this one being Suite in Old Style

Although completely recognizable, there are differences in this year’s Proms concerts, most of them what one would expect. One has to show proof of vaccination to get into the Albert Hall, and then most of the audience is masked. There are still Promenaders, but fewer of them, and the audiences are in general less populated. This decline in numbers doesn’t seem to have in any way reduced the general enthusiasm for the concerts, though. The Prom on August 15 was centered around the South African ‘cellist Abel Selaocoe and included along with him his trio Chesaba (in which he is